brokenoaks

No good reason why a cache description shouldn't, either, if that's what the cache owner wants. If the reviewer perceived an agenda, the cache wouldn't have been published. And yet here it is. This whole PC thing is going way too far. You may not agree with the citation for whatever reason, but that's what was said on the soldiers' Medal, that's what's on the plaque, I don't see how putting it in the cache description for that site is wrong, insensitive, or pushing an agenda. Or should we ban all plaques, quotes, and historical facts from geocaching descriptions for fear of offending a nebulous 'someone'? We might end up with something like this: "Cache is a square ammo box located at the coordinates above. The box is made of metal and was grey, but I painted it green with white daisies. I apologize if this offends any environmentalists out there." I am quite sure someone will be offended by the use of and ammo box. after all it was formally military hardware therefore it may possibly be promoting war. .

No - it honors the soldier and what he/she did. War is not pretty, not likeable but it has happened in the past, is happening right now and will happen in the future. In all such battles - some individual actions will stand out. Some markers will recognize that - placing a cache nearby noting the marker should not be a big deal. Placing the cache noting the marker isn't a big deal. Using the cache description to provide an interpretation of the historical facts is promoting an agenda. What the soldier "did" is subject to interpretation. To some people, that soldier is a hero who should be honoured, to others that soldier is an enemy who should be forgotten, to others the entire war is a disgrace that shouldn't be honoured in any way. Geocaches are not the place to make these determinations. Geocaches can and should lead people to places of interest, and that's it. The geocache should not be placed with the intent to promote a particular interpretation of history. I think intent is the key here. Is the simple mention of an event promoting an agenda? If I place a cache in a national forest and mention the name of the forest in the cache description am I promoting the agenda of the Nation Forest Service? I think not! Historical things happen good and bad. the mere act of placing a cache in a particular location to draw people to that location is an agenda. As for the OP's questions about this particular cache; in my opinion it probably is promoting an agenda but it's not blatant and it is historically accurate (at least according to the winners who get to record history as they see it). Is it tasteful? irrelevant. Is it a guideline violation? no Would you publish this cache if you were a reviewer? yes Would you publish a similar cache for a Japanese soldier at Pearl Harbor? yes

. I'll make sure to include working links in any actual emails I send. So I am done sending emails until my event is over next week. So far I have checked the 2,000 caches nearest my house for missing Trackables. I have sent over 150 notices out to the CO's and the TB owners. I have been getting about a 50% response rate. That seems awesome to me. What should I do if people take no action? Is there a way Geocaching can remove missing items? Should I send them a list every two weeks of Trackables that never get removed by the CO or TB owner? So this project is all in preparation of an cache event? anyway it does not sound like a great plan. There are so many extenuating circumstances to missing trackables and the approach you propose appears to addresses only one of those. In this world there are some responsible cachers and some not so responsible. the responsible ones keep track and do their own house cleaning without needing the cache police on the other hand those that don't, an email reminder is probably not going to make any difference. A simple example that I am sure many others have done the same, one of my trackables quickly went missing after its release. I decided to wait a few weeks and see if it made one of those magical reappearances. it did not. I decided to do a re-release of the back up with the same tracking number. during this time period I would not appreciate anyone interfering with my approach to dealing with this.

Spring is arriving early in the Columbia River Gorge. Check out my geopup on one of our finds high up above the river today. It's looking like it's going to be a great year for the wild flowers and Geocaching this year.

trackables are personal property and the responsibility of whomever owns them. as a cache owner I have no responsibility to maintain someone's personal property.

earlier this winter someone logged one of my caches online. The cache container is an ammo box. they stated that it was encased in ice and they could not get it open. obviously they did not get to the log book inside but I am certain that they found the cache so the online log stays. I am just happy they used common since and did not take a hammer to the cache to get it open to sign the log. just my opinion, if a cache is too small to contain a writing instrument and I don't happen to have one I will simply log it online. if the owner doesn't like it and deletes the log too bad, I still found it.

I own a cache that is 158 miles from my home coordinates. I am retired and often travel out that distance, the cache is in a remote location with little chance of being muggled, and it is in a air tight ammo container so not much chance of getting damaged. I read every log and if there is a problem I can address it in very short order. before my reviewer would allow it we emailed back and forth a few times and after I explained the cache and my maintenance plan he had no problem publishing it. It is not a big problem placing a long distance cache. You just have to have a good plan.

Will cachers themselves be the downfall of the game? Perhaps so if we don't take the responsibility to monitor our own caches. Rules and cache police are not the answer. It doesn't take a genius to read the logs of our own caches and correct any problems we see. How many things like this are going to happen before more and more of us simply give it up and not play the game anymore? After reading the mission of a TB I picked up this weekend I wanted to get it back out in circulation as soon as possible so I stopped by a TB hotel not far from my home to drop it off. disappointing to say the least. I found the soggy cache with an inch of water in it (Tupperware makes lousy cache containers) especially with no attempt to camouflage it at all. it was laying in plain sight with just a small chunk of tree bark trying to hide it. all the trackible items in the inventory were gone missing and according to their logs none have reappeared anywhere. upon going online and reading all the logs for this particular cache this appears to be an ongoing problem with it. the only thing in it was a damp log. needless to say I did not leave the travel bug I brought up and I did not even bother to pick up the nasty wet log to write a note, from the looks of it I doubt the cache owner would see it anyway. I did leave a note online but that probably will not do any good as there have been others. it baffles me why someone would go to the trouble of placing a cache and not bother to follow it up.

I retrieved a TB this weekend that is part of a travel bug challenge. This bug was not in the inventory of the cache where I found it and when I got home and did the research I discovered that someone did not log it out of its previous or into the one where I found it. I know that this is not unusual but in this case the bug will not get credit in the challenge for the mileage of that one leg. does anyone know a way to fix this and get it's mileage it is due?

That's really not much time for a cacher to keep a TB, especially during the winter. I would not worry too much about it or do anything for a while. anyway if they decide to keep it there is little you can do.

I have thoroughly red the guidelines and try to adhere to them as I understand them. as stated they are just guidelines and so, left up to interpretation. also it is inevitable that some people will push them as far as they can so reporting them will not help anyway. I have never reported anything that I thought was a violation as I figured it was just that, an opinion. or perhaps I have just never seen anything out there geocaching that bothered me so much I felt the need to report it to someone.

congratulation on you and your kids first find. making it a family affair ia all the more special. I am sure you and the kids will have many more wonderful adventures, especially when your new GPSr gets there. have fun!

Just what do you think "thinning the herd" implies?

wow! tough crowd that has decided that being young and stupid warrants the death penalty.

well I never said anything about paper maps. one of my points is that these manufactures of navigation devices advertise that they will easily navigate you to wherever you want to go with no problem. that's simply not the truth and perhaps they should do the responsible thing. Don_j wants to lay it off on the forest service to be responsible for the stupid things people do? there are 1,368,300 acres in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. does anyone really think the FS can control all the accesses to it? Yes people have to do the responsible thing, corporations are made up of people, they should do the right thing too.

I too was willing to just write this off as operator error and leave it at that but last night I had a change of opinion. My wife and I and another couple went to dinner at a resort in Trout Lake Washington, a very small town at the south foot of Mount Adams. A young couple came in obviously rather distraught. we exchanged greeting and the young man mentioned he was from Seattle and had been driving for over 10 hours. Although the weather was bad I knew it should not have been over a 4 or 5 hour drive at most. When I asked him what had happened he explained that he had followed his navigation system taking the shortest route from Seattle to Trout Lake. well that just so happens to take you through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest right up to almost the tree line of Mount Adams. they made it to within about 40 miles of Trout Lake when the road became impassable because of the snow. They managed to get turned around and went back to Seattle and took the long safe rout around the mountain. Now I know that Mt. Adams country and that last 40 miles would have taken them to over the 6000 foot elevation where no roads are maintained and no one goes during the winter. If they would have gone any further or even gotten stuck where they turned around they probably would not have been found until the spring snow melt. I know that it was a mistake on his part but this is obviously becoming a problem. Most every consumer product has warning labels. We the experienced users and the makers of these GPSr and mapping programs know they can lead people down the wrong road into trouble. On the last night of 2009 we came very close to losing another young couple to this problem. Is a simple warning label and a bit of programming built into the unit that could prevent this from happening too much to ask of the manufacturers?

It's not that I hate FTF anymore than the numbers game or micros I am simply not obsessed by those aspects of geocaching. I would not be interested in a magazine that appears to focus in on the FTF aspect. this may or may not be the case with the proposed publication but the title certainly indicates it. there is a lot to be said about a name, a poorly thought out one is an indication of the contents.

FTF just screams negative. I won't be subscribing.

I like vine maple. When properly cured it is light strong and has good flexibility. it also has great character with all the twists and kinks it has. of course if you are making your own it usually depends on what is available in your area. often I will just pick up whatever is lying around, use it for the day and discard it when I am done.

wow! it's really not rocket science to place a cache. if you simply read the guidelines and follow the simple instructions I think most people will get it. It makes no difference if you have 1 or 10000 finds, if you don't read the guidelines and use common since you may run into problems placing a cache.

rockhounding

We really need to keep that stick in hand for those that feel that they have to point out that a subject has been discussed before. Gees man the OP has only been a member for four months. give them a break. How will they learn the game if they don't get proper answers to questions? and the OP did ask how to find a thread where the subject has been discussed before!

I don't think a requirement like that is the way to deal with this problem. although it probably happens more with newer cachers, we get poorly thought out and non maintained caches from people that have been in the game for a long time. there is a system in place that addresses this. it may not happen instantly but by following these guidelines problem caches will eventually get fixed or archived. Given the number of caches out there you are sometimes going to find some junk, simply log it appropriately and move on to the next

My belief of what you are observing on this forum is that those that post here are a very small percentage of the people that are out there Geocaching. I do not think that these opinions (including mine) are in any way an accurate representation what the general Geocaching community thinks about any given subject. as with most internet forums this one is simply personal opinions of the few that bother to post. Groundspeaks guidelines are rather straight forward but as with most simple thing they can be interpreted in ways that were never intended.

My wife and I went to visit our kids and grandkids in Prineville Oregon last Sunday. It was cold with a little snow on the ground but everyone was curious what this Geocaching thing that grandma and grandpa have been into for the past couple of years was all about. I knew there were two caches just a mile down the road so we all piled into my pickup and off we went on their first Geocaching adventure. When we got close I parked and turned my GPSR over to my son-in-law and I just lagged behind and let him and the grandkids do all the searching. They found the first one with little trouble and that sparked a lot of excitement and questions about various aspects of Geocaching. They were all anxious for more so we moved on and found our second one of the day. interestingly they were not interested in the swag, just the hunt, so we took nothing but the adventure. These kids genuinely enjoyed themselves and were asking when we could do it again. Geocaching can definitely be a family bonding experience that I hope others will take advantage of. well it won't let me edit the topic title so i guess it will be kida instead of kids